73 Proven and Simple Ways to Grow Your Email List

Looking for some new ideas to grow your email list? Smart marketers know that the more different ways you can entice people to join your email list, the better. In this post, we’ll share 73 proven and simple ways to grow your email list.

Did you know that your email list naturally degrades by approx. 22.5% every year? That’s why it is so important to continuously grow your email list and make up for these lost subscribers.

If you’ve run out of ideas, don’t worry! Here are 73 ideas that are proven to work, and super simple to implement…

1. One-up the competition with your lead magnet by making it bigger and better. For example, if your competition is offering a 30-point checklist, make yours a 50-point checklist.

2. Add content upgrades to your blog posts. These could be as simple as a PDF, condensed version of the post with additional, “bonus” information. Here are 30 content upgrade ideas you can use.

3. Make some of your content gated.Gated content is content on your website that can’t be accessed until the visitor enters their email address. Use OptinMonster’s Content Lock feature to gate your content.

4. Host webinars. You can host a webinar for free using Google+ Hangouts on Air, and they convert really well because live events have a high perceived value.

5. Host a giveaway. Require participants to sign up with their email address, and give them additional entries when they share the giveaway on social media.

6. Create a quiz and require that participants enter their email address before they can download their results. You can use a tool like Qzzr to do this.

10. Pin your optin landing page on Pinterest. Then, you can boost your pin with Pinterest ads to drive even more traffic.

11. Answer questions on Quora that are related to the topic of your lead magnet. Then include a link to your optin landing page for further reference.

12. Search forums for questions related to the topic of your lead magnet. Then answer the question with a link to your optin landing page.

13. Answer questions in Facebook groups. Just don’t post the link to your optin unless it is allowed by the group admin. Instead, you can ask members to private message you for the link if they want it.

14. Participate in LinkedIn groups to become known as an expert, and then post the link to your optin landing page when the time is right.

20. Add a call-to-action to your Google+ Page with a link to your optin landing page.

21. Submit guest posts to popular blogs serving your target market and include a call to action in your author byline with a link to your optin landing page. Just make sure to avoid these 6 mistakes when writing your guest posts.

23. Seek out joint venture partnerships and do an exchange: they send an email to their list about your optin offer, and you send an email to your list about theirs. You both grow your lists in the process!

35. Display page-specific optin forms. In other words, don’t just show the same optin on every page or blog post… use a lead magnet or content upgrade that is specific to the content the visitor is currently viewing.

36. Add a newsletter opt-in checkbox next to the submit comment button. You can use the WP-Leads WordPress plugin to accomplish this.

43. Add an anti-spam policy right below the submit button on your optin form to increase conversions. For example, “Your email address is 100% secure and we will never sell your information to a 3rd party.”

44. Offer different lead magnets for different segments of your audience. Here’s an example of a popup that offers a choice of multiple lead magnets based on the user’s needs:

45. Give a preview of your newsletter to show visitors what they’re missing out on if they don’t sign up.

46. Add a fishbowl to your counter (for brick and mortar businesses) and ask shoppers to leave their email address in the bowl for a chance to win a prize.

47. Include a call to action on a sandwich board outside your store that encourages shoppers to sign up for your email list.

48. Add a call to action to your Facebook cover photo, encouraging visitors to sign up with their email.

49. Add a call to action to your YouTube Channel with a link to your optin landing page.

50. Use Foursquare to post an alert to people in your area with a link to your optin form.

Comments

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Happy you found the article useful, Jenny. 🙂 You might also enjoy this piece on welcome emails, which has examples and best practices. And please follow us on Facebook to keep up with our guides as we publish them.

Excellent content. Full of useful tips & ideas. Will be using some of the ideas for a new website and campaigns being run in Brisbane, Australia. Thanks so much for sharing & keep up the great work. – I am now officially a fan!!!

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